go_router 0.7.0

A declarative router for Flutter based on Navigation 2 supporting deep linking, data-driven routes and more

go_router

The goal of the go_router package is to simplify use of the Router in Flutter as specified by the MaterialApp.router constructor. By default, it requires an implementation of the RouterDelegate and RouteInformationParser classes. These two implementations themselves imply the definition of a custom type to hold the app state that drives the creation of the Navigator. You can read an excellent blog post on these requirements on Medium. This separation of responsibilities allows the Flutter developer to implement a number of routing and navigation policies at the cost of complexity.

The go_router makes three simplifying assumptions to reduce complexity:

1. all routing in the app will happen via schemeless absolute URI-compliant names
2. an entire stack of pages can be constructed from the location alone
3. the concept of "back" in your app is "up" the stack of pages

These assumptions allow go_router to provide a simpler implementation of your app's custom router regardless of the platform you're targeting. Specifically, since web users can enter arbitrary locations to navigate your app, go_router is designed to be able to handle arbitrary locations while still allowing an easy-to-use developer experience.

Getting Started

To use the go_router package, follow these instructions.

Declarative Routing

The go_router is governed by a set of routes which you specify via a routes builder function:

class App extends StatelessWidget {
  ...
  late final _router = GoRouter(routes: _routesBuilder, error: _errorBuilder);
  List<GoRoute> _routesBuilder(BuildContext context, String location) => [
    GoRoute(
      path: '/',
      builder: (context, state) => const MaterialPage<HomePage>(
        key: state.pageKey,
        child: Page1Page(),
      ),
    ),
    GoRoute(
      path: '/page2',
      builder: (context, state) => const MaterialPage<Page2Page>(
        key: state.pageKey,
        child: Page2Page(),
      ),
    ),
  ];
  ...
}

In this case, we've defined two routes. These route path will be matched against the location. Only a single path will be matched, specifically the one that matches the entire location (and so it doesn't matter in which order you list your routes). A GoRoute also contains a page builder function which is called to create the page when a path is matched.

The builder function is passed a state object which contains some useful information like the current location that's being matched, parameter values for parametized routes and the one used in this example code is the pageKey property of the state object. The pageKey is used to create a unique key for the MaterialPage or CupertinoPage based on the current location for that page in the stack of pages, so it will uniquely identify the page w/o having to hardcode a key or come up with one yourself.

In addition, the go_router needs an error handler in case no page is found or if any of the page builder functions throws an exception, e.g.

class App extends StatelessWidget {
  ...
  late final _router = GoRouter(routes: _routesBuilder, error: _errorBuilder);
  ...
  Page<dynamic> _errorBuilder(BuildContext context, GoRouterState state) =>
      MaterialPage<ErrorPage>(
        key: state.pageKey,
        child: ErrorPage(state.error),
      );
}

The GoRouterState object contains the location that caused the exception and the Exception that was thrown attempting to navigate to that route.

With these two functions in hand, you can establish your app's custom routing policy using the MaterialApp.router constructor:

class App extends StatelessWidget {
  App({Key? key}) : super(key: key);

  @override
  Widget build(BuildContext context) => MaterialApp.router(
        routeInformationParser: _router.routeInformationParser,
        routerDelegate: _router.routerDelegate,
      );

  late final _router = GoRouter(routes: _routesBuilder, error: _errorBuilder);
  List<GoRoute> _routesBuilder(BuildContext context, String location) => ...
  Page<dynamic> _errorBuilder(BuildContext context, GoRouterState state) => ...
}

With the router in place, your app can now navigate between pages.

Navigation

To navigate between pages, use the GoRouter.go method:

// navigate using the GoRouter
onTap: () => GoRouter.of(context).go('/page2')

The go_router also provides a simplified version using Dart extension methods:

// more easily navigate using the GoRouter
onTap: () => context.go('/page2')

The simplified version maps directly to the more fully-specified version, so you can use either. If you're curious, the ability to just call context.go(...) and have the right thing happen is where the name of the go_router came from.

Initial Location

If you'd like to set an initial location for routing, you can:

late final _router = GoRouter(
  routes: _routesBuilder,
  error: _errorBuilder,
  initialLocation: '/page2',
);

This location will only be used if the initial location would otherwise be /. If your app is started using deep linking, the initial location will be ignored.

Parameters

The route paths are defined and implemented in the path_to_regexp package, which gives you the ability to include parameters in your route:

List<GoRoute> _routesBuilder(BuildContext context, String location) => [
  GoRoute(
    path: '/family/:fid',
    builder: (context, state) {
      final family = Families.family(state.params['fid']!);

      return MaterialPage<FamilyPage>(
        key: state.pageKey,
        child: FamilyPage(family: family),
      );
    },
  ),
];

The page builder function can use the parameters parsed from the path to do things like look up data to use to initialize each page. If you'd like to be more restrictive about the parameters, you can use regular expressions, e.g. /family/:fid(f\d+).

Sub-routes

Every top-level route will create a navigation stack of one page. To produce an entire stack of pages, you can use sub-routes. In the case that a top-level route only matches part of the location, the rest of the location can be matched against sub-routes. The rules are still the same, i.e. that only a single route at any level will be matched and the entire location much be matched.

For example, the location /family/f1/person/p2, can be made to match multiple sub-routes to create a stack of pages:

/         => HomePage()
family/f1 => FamilyPage('f1')
person/p2 => PersonPage('p2') ← showing this page, Back pops the stack ↑

To specify a set of pages like this, you can use sub-page routing via the routes parameter to the GoRoute constructor:

List<GoRoute> _routesBuilder(BuildContext context, String location) => [
  GoRoute(
    path: '/',
    builder: (context, state) => MaterialPage<HomePage>(
      key: state.pageKey,
      child: HomePage(families: Families.data),
    ),
    routes: [
      GoRoute(
        path: 'family/:fid',
        builder: (context, state) {
          final family = Families.family(state.params['fid']!);

          return MaterialPage<FamilyPage>(
            key: state.pageKey,
            child: FamilyPage(family: family),
          );
        },
        routes: [
          GoRoute(
            path: 'person/:pid',
            builder: (context, state) {
              final family = Families.family(state.params['fid']!);
              final person = family.person(state.params['pid']!);

              return MaterialPage<PersonPage>(
                key: state.pageKey,
                child: PersonPage(family: family, person: person),
              );
            },
          ),
        ],
      ),
    ],
  ),
];

The go_router will match the routes all the way down the tree of sub-routes to build up a stack of pages. If go_router doesn't find a match, then the error handler will be called.

Also, the go_router will pass parameters from higher level sub-routes so that they can be used in lower level routes, e.g. fid is matched as part of the family/:fid route, but it's passed along to the person/:pid route because it's a sub-route of the family/:fid route.

Conditional Routes

The routes builder is called each time that the location changes, which allows you to change the routes based on the location. Furthermore, if you'd like to change the set of routes based on conditional app state, you can do so using InheritedWidget or one of it's wrappers. For example, imagine a simple class to track the app's current logged in state:

class LoginInfo extends ChangeNotifier {
  var _userName = '';
  String get userName => _userName;
  bool get loggedIn => _userName.isNotEmpty;

  void login(String userName) {
    _userName = userName;
    notifyListeners();
  }

  void logout(String userName) {
    _userName = '';
    notifyListeners();
  }
}

Because the LoginInfo is a ChangeNotifier, it can accept listeners and notify them of data changes. We can then use the provider package (which is based on InheritedWidget) to drop an instance of LoginInfo into the widget tree:

class App extends StatelessWidget {
  // add the login info into the tree as app state that can change over time
  @override
  Widget build(BuildContext context) => ChangeNotifierProvider<LoginInfo>(
        create: (context) => LoginInfo(),
        child: MaterialApp.router(
          routeInformationParser: _router.routeInformationParser,
          routerDelegate: _router.routerDelegate,
          title: 'Conditional Routes GoRouter Example',
        ),
      );
...
}

Now imagine a login page that pulls the login info out of the widget tree and changes the login state as appropriate:

class LoginPage extends StatelessWidget {
  @override
  Widget build(BuildContext context) => Scaffold(
        appBar: AppBar(title: Text(_title(context))),
        body: Center(
          child: Column(
            mainAxisAlignment: MainAxisAlignment.center,
            children: [
              ElevatedButton(
                // log a user in, letting all the listeners know
                onPressed: () => context.read<LoginInfo>().login('user1'),
                child: const Text('Login'),
              ),
            ],
          ),
        ),
      );
...
}

Notice the use of context.read from the provider package to walk the widget tree to find the login info and login a sample user. This causes the listeners to this data to be notified and for any widgets listening for this change to rebuild. We can then use this data when implementing the GoRouter routes builder to decide which routes are allowed:

class App extends StatelessWidget {
  ...
  late final _router = GoRouter(routes: _routeBuilder, error: _errorBuilder);

  // the routes when the user is logged in
  final _loggedInRoutes = [
    GoRoute(
      path: '/',
      builder: (context, state) => MaterialPage<HomePage>(
        key: state.pageKey,
        child: HomePage(families: Families.data),
      ),
      routes: [
        GoRoute(
          path: 'family/:fid',
          builder: (context, state) {
            final family = Families.family(state.params['fid']!);

            return MaterialPage<FamilyPage>(
              key: state.pageKey,
              child: FamilyPage(family: family),
            );
          },
          routes: [
            GoRoute(
              path: 'person/:pid',
              builder: (context, state) {
                final family = Families.family(state.params['fid']!);
                final person = family.person(state.params['pid']!);

                return MaterialPage<PersonPage>(
                  key: state.pageKey,
                  child: PersonPage(family: family, person: person),
                );
              },
            ),
          ],
        ),
      ],
    ),
  ];

  // the routes when the user is not logged in
  final _loggedOutRoutes = [
    GoRoute(
      path: '/',
      builder: (context, state) => MaterialPage<LoginPage>(
        key: state.pageKey,
        child: LoginPage(),
      ),
    ),
  ];

  // changes in the login info will rebuild the stack of routes
  List<GoRoute> _routeBuilder(BuildContext context, String location) =>
      context.watch<LoginInfo>().loggedIn ? _loggedInRoutes : _loggedOutRoutes;

  ...
}

Here we've defined two lists of routes, one for when the user is logged in and one for when they're not. Then, we use context.watch to read the login info to determine which list of routes to return. And because we used context.watch instead of context.read, whenever the login info object changes, the routes builder is automatically called for the correct list of routes based on the current app state.

Conditional routes are useful for when your app's routes change based on app state changes. However, for the right way to guard against a user accessing pages for which they don't have access, you should use guards instead.

Guards for redirection

Sometimes you want to guard pages from being accessed when they shouldn't be, e.g. when the user is not yet logged in. To do this, initialize the GoRouter with a guard object using the guard parameter of the ctor:

class App extends StatelessWidget {
  final loginInfo = LoginInfo();
  App({Key? key}) : super(key: key);

  // add the login info into the tree as app state that can change over time
  @override
  Widget build(BuildContext context) => ChangeNotifierProvider<LoginInfo>.value(
        value: loginInfo,
        child: MaterialApp.router(
          routeInformationParser: _router.routeInformationParser,
          routerDelegate: _router.routerDelegate,
          title: 'Redirection GoRouter Example',
          debugShowCheckedModeBanner: false,
        ),
      );

  late final _router = GoRouter(
    routes: _routesBuilder,
    error: _errorBuilder,

    // the guard checks if the user is logged in
    guard: Guard(loginInfo),
  );

  List<GoRoute> _routesBuilder(BuildContext context, String location) => ...
  Page<dynamic> _errorBuilder(BuildContext context, GoRouterState state) => ...
}

class Guard extends GoRouterGuard {...}

Your guard class must extend the GoRouterGuard class and override the redirect method:

class Guard extends GoRouterGuard {
  // passing loginInfo to the base class will cause a change to trigger routing
  Guard(LoginInfo loginInfo) : super(loginInfo);

  LoginInfo get loginInfo => super.listenable! as LoginInfo;

  // redirect based on app and routing state
  @override
  String? redirect(String location) {
    final loggedIn = loginInfo.loggedIn;
    final goingToLogin = location == '/login';

    // the user is not logged in and not headed to /login, they need to login
    if (!loggedIn && !goingToLogin) return '/login';

    // the user is logged in and headed to /login, no need to login again
    if (loggedIn && goingToLogin) return '/';

    // no need to redirect at all
    return null;
  }
}

In this code, if the user is not logged in and not going to the /login path, we redirect to /login. Likewise, if the user is logged in but going /login, we redirect to /.

Notice that the login info is passed to the super constructor of the base guard class. This is so that when the login info changes, i.e. the user logs in, the route will be refreshed. Notice also that the the custom guard class uses the base class's listenable property to get to the login info, avoiding the need to cache the same data twice.

In this example, the workflow works like this:

1. the user navigates to / but is not logged in, so is redirected to /login
2. the user logs in, which changes the login info, which causes go_router to refresh the route
3. the router calls the guard's redirect method with the location where the app is currently navigated to: /login
4. the user is now logged in, so the guard redirects the user to /

This login path is common enough that go_router has built in support for it via the GoRouterLoginGuard class. Start by creating your login info class with the GoRouterLoggedIn mixin:

class LoginInfo extends ChangeNotifier with GoRouterLoggedIn {
  var _userName = '';
  String get userName => _userName;

  void login(String userName) {
    _userName = userName;
    notifyListeners();
  }

  void logout(String userName) {
    _userName = '';
    notifyListeners();
  }

  // override the GoRouterLoggedIn.loggedIn property
  @override
  bool get loggedIn => _userName.isNotEmpty;
}

The loggedIn property is used by the GoRouterLoginGuard class to determine the user's logged in state. With this in hand, you can simply use the GoLoginGuard class instead of implementing your own custom guard:

// implements GoRouterLoggedIn
final loginInfo = LoginInfo();

late final _router = GoRouter(
  routes: _routesBuilder,
  error: _errorBuilder,

  // the guard checks if the user is logged in via the GoRouterLoggedIn mixin
  guard: GoRouterLoginGuard(loginInfo, loginPath: '/login'),
);

By default, if the user is logged in and headed to the login path, they will be redirected to /. If you'd like to override this behavior, you can pass the homePath parameter to the GoRouterLoginGuard ctor.

Query Parameters

Sometimes you're doing deep linking and you'd like a user to first login before going to the location that represents the deep link. In that case, you can use query parameters in the guard:

class Guard extends GoRouterGuard {
  ...

  // redirect based on app and routing state
  @override
  String? redirect(String location) {
    // watching LoginInfo will cause a change in LoginInfo to trigger routing
    final loggedIn = loginInfo.loggedIn;
    final loc = Uri.parse(location).path;
    final goingToLogin = loc == '/login';

    // the user is not logged in and not headed to /login, they need to login
    // also, keep track of the deep link that was used to get here
    if (!loggedIn && !goingToLogin) return '/login?from=$loc';

    // the user is logged in and headed to /login, no need to login again
    if (loggedIn && goingToLogin) return '/';

    // no need to redirect at all
    return null;
  }
}

In this example, if the user isn't logged in, they're redirected to /login with a from query parameter set to the deep link. Now, when the /login route is matched, we want to pull the from parameter out of the state object to pass along to the LoginPage:

GoRoute(
  path: '/login',
  builder: (context, state) => MaterialPage<LoginPage>(
    key: state.pageKey,

    // pass the deep link to the LoginPage (if there is one)
    child: LoginPage(from: state.args['from']),
  ),
),

In the LoginPage, if the from parameter was passed, we use it to go to the deep link location after a successful login:

class LoginPage extends StatelessWidget {
  final String? from;
  const LoginPage({this.from, Key? key}) : super(key: key);

  @override
  Widget build(BuildContext context) => Scaffold(
        appBar: AppBar(title: Text(_title(context))),
        body: Center(
          child: Column(
            mainAxisAlignment: MainAxisAlignment.center,
            children: [
              ElevatedButton(
                  // log a user in, letting all the listeners know
                  context.read<LoginInfo>().login('user1');

                  // if there's a deep link, go there
                  if (from != null) context.go(from!);
                },
                child: const Text('Login'),
              ),
            ],
          ),
        ),
      );
}

The GoRouterLoginGuard class also has a fromParam property that you can use to simplify your routing in this case, too:

// implements GoRouterLoggedIn
final loginInfo = LoginInfo();

late final _router = GoRouter(
  routes: _routesBuilder,
  error: _errorBuilder,

  // the guard checks if the user is logged in via the GoRouterLoggedIn mixin,
  // passing in the original location as a query parameter
  guard: GoRouterLoginGuard(
    loginInfo,
    loginPath: '/login',
    fromParam: 'from',
  ),
);

The GoRouterLoginGuard doesn't assume you want to pass along the original location so that it doesn't step on a query parameter with a default name you don't set and are therefore not aware of.

Deep Linking

Flutter defines "deep linking" as "opening a URL displays that screen in your app." Anything that's listed as a GoRoute can be accessed via deep linking across Android, iOS and the web. Support works out of the box for the web, of course, via the address bar, but requires additional configuration for Android and iOS as described in the Flutter docs.

To make deep links more svelte for your users, you may decide to change Flutter's default URL path strategy.

URL Path Strategy

By default, Flutter adds a hash (#) into the URL for web apps:

The process for turning off the hash is documented but fiddly. The go_router has built-in support for setting the URL path strategy, however, so you can simply call GoRouter.setUrlPathStrategy before calling runApp and make your choice:

void main() {
  // turn on the # in the URLs on the web (default)
  // GoRouter.setUrlPathStrategy(UrlPathStrategy.hash);

  // turn off the # in the URLs on the web
  GoRouter.setUrlPathStrategy(UrlPathStrategy.path);

  runApp(App());
}

Setting the path instead of the hash strategy turns off the # in the URLs:

If your router is created as part of the construction of the widget passed to the runApp method, you can use a shortcut to set the URL path strategy by using the urlPathStrategy parameter of the GoRouter ctor:

 // no need to call GoRouter.setUrlPathStrategy() here
 void main() => runApp(App());

/// sample app using the path URL strategy, i.e. no # in the URL path
class App extends StatelessWidget {
  late final _router = GoRouter(
    routes: _routesBuilder,
    error: _errorBuilder,
    // turn off the # in the URLs on the web
    urlPathStrategy: UrlPathStrategy.path,
  );
  ...
}

Finally, when you deploy your Flutter web app to a web server, it needs to be configured such that every URL ends up at your Flutter web app's index.html, otherwise Flutter won't be able to route to your pages. If you're using Firebase hosting, you can configure rewrites to cause all URLs to be rewritten to index.html.

If you'd like to test your release build locally before publishing, and get that cool redirect to index.html feature, you can use flutter run itself:

$ flutter run -d chrome --release lib/url_strategy.dart

Note that you have to run this command from a place where flutter run can find the web/index.html file.

Of course, any local web server that can be configured to redirect all traffic to index.html will do, e.g. live-server.

Custom Builder

As described, the go_router uses the list of GoRoute objects to implement it's routing policy using paths to match and using the order of matches to create the Navigator.pop() implementation, etc. If you'd like to implement the routing policy yourself, you can implement a widget builder that is given a location and is responsible for producing a Navigator. For example, this builder can be implemented and passed to the GoRouter.builder constructor like so:

class App extends StatelessWidget {
  ...
  late final _router = GoRouter.builder(builder: _builder);
  Widget _builder(BuildContext context, String location) {
    final locPages = <String, Page<dynamic>>{};

    try {
      final segments = Uri.parse(location).pathSegments;

      // home page, i.e. '/'
      {
        const loc = '/';
        final page = MaterialPage<HomePage>(
          key: const ValueKey('HomePage'),
          child: HomePage(families: Families.data),
        );
        locPages[loc] = page;
      }

      // family page, e.g. '/family/:fid
      if (segments.length >= 2 && segments[0] == 'family') {
        final fid = segments[1];
        final family = Families.family(fid);

        final loc = '/family/$fid';
        final page = MaterialPage<FamilyPage>(
          key: ValueKey(family),
          child: FamilyPage(family: family),
        );

        locPages[loc] = page;
      }

      // person page, e.g. '/family/:fid/person/:pid
      if (segments.length >= 4 &&
          segments[0] == 'family' &&
          segments[2] == 'person') {
        final fid = segments[1];
        final pid = segments[3];
        final family = Families.family(fid);
        final person = family.person(pid);

        final loc = '/family/$fid/person/$pid';
        final page = MaterialPage<PersonPage>(
          key: ValueKey(person),
          child: PersonPage(family: family, person: person),
        );

        locPages[loc] = page;
      }

      // if we haven't found any matching routes OR if the last route doesn't
      // match exactly, then we haven't got a valid stack of pages; the latter
      // allows '/' to match as part of a stack of pages but to fail on
      // '/nonsense'
      if (locPages.isEmpty ||
          locPages.keys.last.toString().toLowerCase() !=
              location.toLowerCase()) {
        throw Exception('page not found: $location');
      }
    } on Exception catch (ex) {
      locPages.clear();

      final loc = location;
      final page = MaterialPage<ErrorPage>(
        key: const ValueKey('ErrorPage'),
        child: ErrorPage(message: ex.toString()),
      );

      locPages[loc] = page;
    }

    return Navigator(
      pages: locPages.values.toList(),
      onPopPage: (route, dynamic result) {
        if (!route.didPop(result)) return false;

        // remove the route for the page we're showing and go to the next
        // location up
        locPages.remove(locPages.keys.last);
        _router.go(locPages.keys.last);

        return true;
      },
    );
  }
}

There's a lot going on here, but it fundamentally boils down to 3 things:

1. Matching portions of the location to instances of the app's pages using manually parsed URI segments for arguments. This mapping is kept in an ordered map so it can be used as a stack of location=>page mappings.
2. Providing an implementation of onPopPage that will translate Navigation.pop to use the location=>page mappings to navigate to the previous page on the stack.
3. Show an error page if any of that fails.

This is the basic policy that the GoRouter itself implements, although in a simplified form w/o features like route paths, redirection or query parameters.

Examples

You can see the go_router in action via the following examples:

• main.dart: define a basic routing policy using a set of declarative GoRoute objects
• init_loc.dart: start at a specific location instead of home (/), which is the default
• sub_routes.dart: provide a stack of pages based on a set of nested routes
• conditional.dart: provide different routes based on changing app state
• redirection.dart: redirect one route to another based on changing app state
• query_params.dart: optional query parameters will be passed to all page builders
• url_strategy.dart: turn off the # in the Flutter web URL
• builder.dart: define routing policy by providing a custom builder

You can run these examples from the command line like so (from the example folder):

$ flutter run lib/main.dart

Or, if you're using Visual Studio Code, a launch.json file has been provided with these examples configured.

Issues

Do you have an issue with or feature request for go_router? Log it on the issue tracker.